Today’s 10m Air Pistol Women final has been a stage of success for both Korea and Australia. Korea’s Park Minjin won Gold at her first try: she had never competed in an ISSF international match before. Australia won its first medal thanks to Dina Aspandiyarova who came back to victory in an ISSF competition by claiming today’s Silver. She was the first Australian shooter to enter a final, during this ISSF World Cup in Sydney.
The whole Korean Shooting team sang their national anthem loud, at the end of today’s 10m Air Pistol Women Final, at the ISSF World Cup in Sydney. Their 22-year old teammate Park Minjin had just won the first Gold medal of her career.
The young shooter surprised everybody by winning Gold at her first try, outdoing former Olympic medallists and ISSF World Cup multi-medallists with apparent ease.
Park walked into the final round in fourth place with 382 points after the qualifications, two points behind the leader Chen Yan, of China and tied with the second Chinese finalist, the Olympic Champion of Beijing Guo Wenjun, currently ranked first in the world in this event.
Shooting consistently throughout the whole match, Park climbed and climbed, bouncing in the lead thanks to a final score of 102.2 points. Together with her qualification score, she totalized 484.2 points, securing Gold with a safe margin on her followers.
Coming in second, Dina Aspandiyarova won the first medal for the host country, Australia. The 33-year old Olympic finalist of Sydney 2000 ended up in second place with a total score of 481.7 (383+98.7) points, winning her first World Cup medal in this event.
Aspandiyarova was followed in third by the 2008 Olympic Champion Guo Wenjun, 25, from China. The world ranking leader, who had qualified tied with Park with 382 points, finished in third with a total score of 481.0 points, after shooting 99.0 points during the final. She had won her last World Cup medal in 2009, when she had closed the season with a Gold medal in Milan.
Two of the best pistol shooters of the World, Bulgaria’s Maria Grozdeva and Serbia’s Jasna Sekaric, ten Olympic medals between the two, finished in fourth and seventh place, with 480.7 and 477.2 points, respectively.
The second Korean finalist Jung Jeehae and the young Indian champion Shweta Chaudhry placed in fifth and sixth place, with 480.6 and 479.8 points, respectively.